This invention relates generally to ultrasound systems, and more particularly, to methods and devices for controlling ultrasound systems with a user interface.
When imaging a patient with an ultrasound imaging device, the user typically holds the probe or transducer on the patient with one hand and controls the operation of the system with the other hand. For example, physical controls such as rotaries, toggles, pushbuttons, trackball, keyboard and the like may be placed on a surface of the system. It is desirable for a user to learn the location and function of the physical controls without having to look away from the ultrasound image on the display.
Some of the physical controls may be context sensitive, meaning that activating the physical control will result in a system response or action that is based on the state of the system. For example, a rotary control may adjust one system parameter during a heart scan and a different system parameter during a thyroid scan. In these cases, a context-sensitive label may be displayed near the control or on the main display to indicate the system parameter to the user. Mapping context sensitive physical controls may be provided to the user as an attempt to group functions close together and/or minimize the number of physical controls needed overall.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to intuitively match the user's physical action with the desired system action or response. For example, if the physical control on the user interface is a rotary device and the system response is adjustment of the brightness on the display, many users would find it logical to turn the control clockwise (CW) to increase the brightness and counter-clockwise (CCW) to reduce the brightness. However, if the physical control is the rotary device and the system action is physically moving a parameter, such as the Doppler baseline, up and down on the display or left and right (such as for Doppler steering), users do not consistently move the physical control in the mapped CW/CCW direction to achieve the desired system response. Also, variation exists from one user to the next.
A variety of different context sensitive physical controls may be made available, such as up/down toggle switches, left/right toggle switches, rotary devices and pushbuttons. For example, if a user interface provides five context sensitive physical controls, two of the controls may be rotary devices, two of the controls may be up/down toggle switches, and one control may be a pushbutton. Alternatively, a rotary control may have the additional functionality of a pushbutton. Still, for a given machine state, the system actions to be performed may not match well to the available physical controls. For example, in one machine state, the use of five rotary devices may be the most intuitive for the five system actions that need to be controlled, leaving no physical room for toggle switches or pushbuttons, which may be the most intuitive physical actions to control system actions for a different machine state.
Additional buttons or controls may be positioned in combination to each other. For example, pushbuttons may be located proximate to a rotary device, such as one button above and one below, or one above, one below, one to the left and one to the right. Then, pushbuttons located above and below the rotary may be mapped to system actions requiring up/down motion. One disadvantage is that the physical action the user takes to move a parameter up and down on the display is mapped to two pushbuttons and may still not be intuitive to the user. Another disadvantage is that the multiple controls require significant space or must be made smaller than the ideal size in order to take up less space. Making the physical controls smaller and/or positioning the controls closer together makes the controls more difficult to use. Space is a particularly important factor in general for smaller ultrasound machines, such as ultrasound machines that are hand-carried or otherwise miniaturized. Therefore user interfaces that match the scale of the rest of the device and can provide desired functionality within the space constraints are desirable.
Thus, known physical controls on a user interface of an ultrasound system are not configured to perform intuitive actions and contextually based intuitive actions while minimizing the required physical space.